I started at Playwing in March of 2022 as an intern, which then led to me employed full time until January of 2024. I was a game designer, but as we were a small team, I had many reponsibilities throughout this period. Here are a few features I was given responsibility of.
Major Game Mode: Outbreak
Outbreak was first featured in The Last Bastion event. It’s the first PvE gamemode in Century: Age of Ashes. You play cooperatively in a team of four dragoneers who have to destroy hordes of “Dwellers from the shadow”, before they break the Valkürian barrier which could lead to the downfall of all civilizations of Skeld.
Each round, you earn gold that you can spend at the start of the next round to buy upgrades for your dragon. Whether it be stronger attacks, faster shots, lower cooldowns. You’ll encounter more enemies as you go, as well as new types of enemies. If you manage to contain the 10 waves of enemies, you win the battle. The game mode is playable in four difficulty settings.
Trailer
Gameplay
My role
I was given the core design responsibility, which after validation went onto a prototype on which I worked for many weeks. Once the prototype got validated, a team of programmers came along to polish the features as well as rework what needed to be. It was a blast working with more experimented people and exchanging ideas about game systems. I discovered that my propositions weren’t so bad and that I was able to communicate and manage a small team. I also worked closely with our UI artist so the user experience would be spotless.
Character: The Rimeblood
Each new Century season came with a new character. For this one, we only had four months. I was the main designer for this character and its powers. The concept was a harassing support kind of class, which would buff allies and debuff enemies just as Overwatch’s Zenyatta. I worked closely with our gameplay programmer as well as artists to closely design the controls and camera for the powers. It was a meticulous work of coordinating everyone on the team so we could achieve the result we wanted. The first ability called “Feral Charge” especially needed iteration, as it was the first time in Century there would be a melee attack.
Major Game Mode : Artifact
I was tasked with coming up with a new game mode concept for the game, that would join the main game mode rotation. The goal was to adapt the classic Search and Destroy gamemode features in games such as Counter Strike or Valorant, but with the gameplay of Century, which is really tricky. In Century, your dragon constantly moves, you cannot hide, you cannot take positions, and you cannot stop. As such, the adaptation was challenging but really fun. It would also be Century’s very first asymetric game mode.
After the game concept was done, another team took on the actual implementation.
Minor game modes
As part of a liveops update, I designed a lot of gamemode concepts, from which two were chosen to be developed as part as the Colosseum event : small twists on existing gamemodes that would renew the player’s interest in the game and would provide more content for future events.
Kingslayer : In each team, one player is designated as the “king”. The team earns points by killing the king. If a king is killed, another player in the team becomes king. If the king survives long enough, they make their team earn point and passes the king role to someone else.
Plunder : A twist on the classic Spoils of War Century game mode. You kill gold carrier dragons and have to bring it back to your team’s vault. But this time, gold is limited and players have to ability to steal from the enemy’s vault.
New abilities
As part of a content update, I worked on four new abilities for the (at the time) four characters in game. This would be the first time wharacters could choose between more than two abilities in Century. Those abilities were meant to be sold using soft currency, providing players with progression. The balancing was especially challenging, as the abilities shouldn’t give an unfair advantage to players.